Does Python need a '>>>' operator?

[David Eppstein]

In article <Prau8.17347$vF6.558738 at news2.tin.it>,
 Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote:

> Very well put.  Indeed, given the small amount of bit-twiddling in
> typical Python usage, I think & ~ | ^ are already overboard -- they
> make a lot of sense in C, a very low-level language that is used a
> LOT for bit-twiddling, but, in Python, named built-in functions might
> have been more appropriate in hindsight (fewer precedence levels to
> remember) -- if not, even, functions in a separate module.

Is it really appropriate to design a language so that only "typical" 
usages are simple, and everything else is made more difficult?

My most recent Python program (a testbed for some signal encoding 
schemes) made extensive use of both bit twiddling and simple generators.  
I'm very happy that Python was available for that purpose.

-- 
David Eppstein       UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
eppstein at ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/